Hackers apparently exploited security holes in the SQL code at the U.N. secretary-general's main Web site over the weekend.
Giorgio Maone, hackademix.net

The defacements, which affected the front page of the secretary-general's site and pages containing statements by the secretary-general and press conference summaries, occurred sometime early Sunday morning, UN spokesman Alex Cerniglia told CNET News.com on Monday. The sites were "cleaned up" by about 9 a.m. PST on Sunday, he said.

In an e-mail message to News.com on Monday morning, Giorgio Maone, an Italian software developer who runs the site, confirmed that "the U.N. staff just deployed a cosmetic patch, which hides it from the most obvious tests, but it cannot prevent an attack."

Maone said he couldn't go into more details than that, out of fear of tipping off the "script kiddies" out there. He said he has alerted the U.N.'s information security department to the continued problems and offered his assistance.

It wasn't immediately clear as of press time how U.N. officials would respond. "We definitely are upgrading security, and we'll continue to look at ways to prevent this from happening," Cerniglia said, adding that the agency welcomes input from security specialists like Maone.

The U.N. is also continuing to investigate the source of the attacks, Cerniglia said. A quick Internet search of the names present in the messages indicates a team of hackers, who appear to have at least some Turkish members and call themselves the "Byond Crew Hack Team," is taking responsibility for the activity.